Just bought MX7118

I just purchased this laptop from best buy which, after taking into account the purchase of a rewards card, brought the price down to about $820.00. Pretty reasonable for so many features.

Just a few thoughts for those considering it. I wasn't too happy with the media center edition of XP they put on it as I need to join domains at work or clients. So I made my recovery DVD using the supplied utility (you only get one shot at this) and proceeded to reformat and install XP Pro on the existing C: partition leaving the backup D: partition alone. Not a good idea. Got some error during the installation of XP about some .dll being missing. Duh, freshly formatted partition, there's not supposed to be anything there. Oh well, let's get drastic and delete both partions and create just one and do a full reformat on it. Installed XP no problem. Don't have the drivers though for the touch pad, video, etc. Well, no problem. That handy recovery DVD I created auto runs a utility that offers all of the drivers you need, neatly organized and easy to install. Off to XP Pro land. Seamless joining of my domain at work and using it at home for a variety of things including gaming. So far, anything that will run on 64mb of video memory seems ok but I've only tested a few games so don't put much stock in that. A gaming machine it's not and I have one dedicated for that purpose. This is a work machine and **** it works nicely.

In one of the earlier posts someone mentioned that the grahics are Radeon X200. The chipset is X200 but the graphics core is built on the X300 from what I've been able to read on the net. I know, not the most trustworthly of places but this is from folks trying to install Linux and they tend to know their hardware when dealing with custom kernels.

And, as mentioned previously, the unoccupied memory slot, only a screwdriver away is great. Just ordered the 512mb module for a total of a gig. Works just fine and I mostly use VS.NET and other application type tools.

Regards,
Fleet

 

Congratulations on your purchase!
That is a very nice price for a machine as itself.
Enjoy it

 

I was just wanting to make sure that you knew that xp media center is the same as Pro plus some media software. Seriously, someone at work tried to upgrade a machine that was media to pro and it wouldnt work... i had told them it was a version of pro and it was proved here. If you look at the OS version with some programs it shows media as Pro.

 

According to my research, admittedly mostly googling around, my impression was that the media center edition was like XP Home in that it wouldn't let you join a domain. You could use shares on a domain but you couldn't join the domain. And I need that functionality. Other than that, I saw no other major differences other than the added media stuff. I need to be able to join domains and run the same OS as others where I work (we're a software development company.) Following the steps I outlined above I've had no problems at all. I show up at work, log in and it automatically connects me to the domain once I turn on wireless. Go home and I'm back on the home network. I'm sure not all, probably most, of the targeted market for this machine won't want or need XP Pro over the Media Edition but I did. And once my 512MB upgrade arrives it's going to beat my work machine hands down. Anyway, this has been my experience, others should consider your warning as well.

Kind regards,
Fleet

 

Windows XP Pro also have multilanguage support as in changing the GUI to the langauge you prefer through a special multilanguage disk. XP Home and MC edition does not support this disk

 

I have had 3 of them.. and not one of them have been stable, at all. From blue screens to lock ups (freeze) to random reboots - they all have been, pretty much, useless for me. Interesting point though, my brother bought his the same day that I got my first one and he hasn't had ONE problem. This particular mx7118 is BSODing like crazy. The reasons why I stuck with the mx7118 is because I needed a laptop in a pinch and I thought I had bought a lemon. After the first exchange, the second machine had a mixture of new issues. So I rushed and hurried to get it exchanged before the 15 day exchange period was up. I didn't get my money back because I was thought I had just got another lemon (based on my brother's experience). Mind you, my brother isn't a power user. His use for the laptop is really just to surf the net/check email. Now my 15 day exchange period is up. I am on my third laptop and it's BSODing at random. Luckily, I am covered by their accidental 3 year plan. I will probably deal with another exchange when I get back home.. or try to install another version of windows. I can't even begin to troubleshoot what problems are causing the blue screens. Good luck to anyone who takes a change on this machine.

BTW.. I use firefox, thunderbird, trillian. Those are my main apps. I uninstalled most of Gateway's apps (McAfee, Money, etc). I am thinking there is a problem with my choice of apps working with this machine because each of the machines I bought did almost the same thing. =/